Adrienne’s portrait is a symbol of the need to keep up appearances that many people feel. Adrienne’s portrait presents a picture-perfect (literally) image of her. It is the reverse of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Oscar Wilde’s book, the portrait of Dorian ages and gets distorted and ugly, while Dorian remains young and beautiful. In this case, the portrait remains forever beautiful, while Adrienne becomes, in spirit, uglier and uglier before her death. The portrait is also a symbolic representation of Tricia’s lies. Tricia blatantly pretends to be unfamiliar with the portrait when, in fact, she is the person who gifted it to Adrienne.

The portrait’s significance is reiterated in the book’s Epilogue, when Tricia reveals that she could not bring herself to destroy the artwork. Instead, it is stashed in the attic of the house, much like Dorian’s own painting in Wilde’s novel. The fact that Tricia can kill Adrienne in cold blood but is unable to destroy the portrait speaks to some kind of sentimentality rarely seen in Tricia’s character. Despite Tricia killing Adrienne, the two women share a bond—both are killers, both manipulate the men in their lives, and both do whatever they have to for self-preservation.